Mean Girls: Why Are Women Turning Against Tina Fey?

New York magazine writer Ariel Levy’s 2005 cultural study Female Chauvinist Pigs described a new kind of misogyny perpetrated by women who curry favor by “Uncle Tomming” mainstream frat behavior in the guise of sexual empowerment. Chelsea Handler, whose raunchy essay collections My Horizontal Life and Are You There Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea sold 1.7 million copies and spawned a number of Chelsea Lites, is one offender. The so-called Fempire — the Hollywood woman-screenwriter foursome of Diablo Cody, Lorene Scafaria (now dating Ashton Kutcher), Dana Fox (writer of big-budget rom-coms What Happens in Vegas and The Wedding Date), and Elizabeth Meriwether — is another. A 2009 New York Times article brought most of the backlash on ringleader Cody, who taught us that there is such a thing as “stripping ironically,” for her smug attitude. There wasn’t an ounce of “everywoman” among them. They were a female Entourage without a chubby Turtle.

Such female chauvinist pigs are supposedly guilty of play, and Levy admonishes them: “If you are the exception that proves the rule, and the rule is that women are inferior, you haven’t made any progress.” But it’s less the Fempire and the Handlerites who need to heed this advice then the likes of Tina Fey, whose “nerdy” onscreen persona and adamant faux feminism masks a Thatcherite morality and tendency to slut-shame.

Since I’m what’s apparently now known as a “comedy nerd,” someone sent me Anna Breslaw’s essay in The New Inquiry called “The Unf*ckables,” which is all about the new wave of raunchy post-modern female comedians, and feminism and sexual politics and conventional standards of beauty.

See, I didn’t go to college, so stuff like this by Breslaw zooms right over my skull:

The only funny women who are free to cross over to mainstream audiences are the ones who are free from the beauty hang-ups that limit their jokes to female audiences. The game, then, is how effortlessly and subliminally someone like Fey can convey her exceptionalism using ironic male touches and the [sic?] feminism as an alibi for their looks advantage, reinforcing the patriarchal standards she often pretends to critique.

So I’m stupid. Sorry.

And some stuff I did understand got up my nose.

Breslaw tosses off a pair of wrongheaded incidentals that nevertheless marred my reading experience the way two pebbles in your shoe can ruin a scenic stroll.

First: “…sauntering onto stages in the farthest outreaches of some podunk town” — a phrase I suspect she typed while forcing out a derisive snort — is what’s otherwise known as “being a working comic.”

Second: Contrary to Breslaw’s assertion, there was nothing “inexplicable” about Joan Rivers’ compulsive ubiquity (like her creepy Fagin-esque bauble-mauling on QVC) “after the suicide of her husband”:

Isn’t she the hipster’s sweetheart, their nerdy-cute heroine who proves you can be attractive AND funny AND successful (AND — I’ll say it even though they never would – still get a husband)?

But this week, columnist Lynn Crosbie also came out swinging at the 30 Rock star/hair dye pitch lady/Sarah Palin impersonator.

What is it, that time of the month…?

Photo via Zachgalifianakisbeard.tumblr.com

Luckily, I’ve known (at a distance) and read (closely) Lynn Crosbie for decades — we’re geographical and chronological contemporaries — so her column made far more sense to me.

She brought up Fey’s recent appearance on Zach Galifianakis’ too-cool-for-me trompe l’oeil talk show Between Two Ferns. (The smartest thing about it is its title.)

Crosbie relates one of Fey’s remarks on the program, then the host’s reply, to wit:

“That was pretty good,” Galifianakis said. “For a girl.”

The aggressive, even physically violent aspect of the talk show is all fabrication and Fey was being set up, of course, to be hilarious in the face of some received, absurd idea about women and humour.

But, quite by accident, Galifianakis’s final burn was uncomfortably astute.

Not about girls, but about Fey, who, because she is not funny, or hot any more, was “pretty good,” considering.

Yikes!

Ultimately, Crosbie’s point is more prosaic — and therefore, more perceptive — than Breslaw’s admirably acrobatic po-mo musings about coarseness, class, and comedy.

With the original 1976 cast of Second City Television, we had Andrea Martin and Catherine O’Hara, who did better work than anyone has done since: All of these women were writers and comics, and it is they who rewrote the script about men and women and being funny.

They are mentioned, in passing, and buried in a long list, in [Fey's bestselling book] Bossypants.

Crosbie also mentions Totie Fields and Pearl Williams. To which list of “balls out” female comics, I’d add Sophie Tucker and Rusty Warren, that raunchy lady whose records your parents put on after you went to bed, and whom Catherine O’Hara affectionately spoofed (while squeezing in a joke that’s part of our province’s morbid lore):

I love to play strippers and to imitate them. I love using that idea for comedy, but the idea of actually going there? I feel like we all need to be better than that. That industry needs to die, by all of us being a little bit better than that.

[W]here [Kathy] Griffin attacks millionaire untouchables like Nicole Kidman for a poor fashion choice, Fey goes for the little people: Internet commenters, obscure mistresses, strippers. Would you rather have another woman insult your dress or call you a whore?

Then there’s Tina Fey’s 2010 declaration that:

You could be the woman who cures cancer and you would still be up against some skank, rocking giant veiny fake boobs where the nipples point in different directions like an old Buick. (…) [T]he world has always been full of whores.

I was taken aback by Fey’s prickly hostility there. Her public persona is more kooky and loveable than crass.

In fact, there she sounds about as crude as the “low class” women she’s targeting.

The lady doth say “whores” too much, no?

I’ll leave it to others to psychoanalyze Tina Fey’s apparent animus towards, yes, looser, but also perhaps less privileged and talented women than she.

By appointing herself a spokesperson not just for hair coloring, but for Her Female Comedy Generation™, Fey has opened herself up to criticism. Some of her fellow females are simply taking up the challenge.

Maybe Tina Fey should give up the urge to wax philosophical from on high on the subject of “Women In Comedy Today,” and go back to just being one of those women — one among equals — instead.

(KATHY SHAIDLE is a blogging pioneer who runs FiveFeetOfFury, now in its 15th year. She's been called "one of the great virtuoso polemicists of our time," by MARK STEYN. Her NEW book is Confessions of A Failed Slut (Thought Catalog, 2014).

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1.
Jeannette

I think…she imitated Sarah Palin so many times that they’ve gotten her confused with the real thing. They don’t like that Sarah Palin lives inside their heads, rent-free, but we laugh at them when they let it out (then we go to Confession for Schadenfreude) and they just can’t take the derisive “PDS, pass the popcorn” reaction they get from Flyover Country boobs. And Tina’s a reasonable facsimile.

Certain celebrities — actors, musicians, authors, etc. — can by hitting all the right notes, become such media darlings that no matter what they do, the arbiters of taste and culture will tell the masses it’s the greatest thing ever … until it’s not, usually when that person’s next work comes out, at which point we are told this if the greatest thing ever, after the celeb’s previous disappointing effort.

That’s where Tina Fey’s been for a while now. It’s not so much she’s wildly popular across the country, but she’s been wildly popular among key people in the bi-coastal media world, due as much to her gender and her political beliefs as it has been to her body of work. And a lot of the people who have been sympathetic to her due to the gender and political aspects (you just can’t trash someone on your own side who can do such a fab Sarah Palin impression), have recognized that even if they agree on politics, she had been kind of coasting among the media elites on the Palin thing for about the last 2 1/2-3 years. That’s where the backlash is coming from in large part, though I would guess most of those doing the lashing aren’t going to fully detail their reasons for the reaction.

It is true that Tina Fey has been elevated because she has just the correct politics. And the humor generated by her patrons and comrades on the Democratic Party left is sadistic. Her misogyny is dominant now, and such elevated institutions as Harvard Business School disseminate materials that are, their way, even funnier than her brand of humor. See http://clarespark.com/2012/05/20/kick-me-again/. For a more scholarly and extended view of misogyny as primarily directed against the moral mother see http://clarespark.com/2012/05/10/androgyny-with-an-aside-on-edna-ferber/, which has a link to my article on George Eliot and other strong 19th century women, valued for their intellects, not their snappy repartee.

Tina Fey is not funny. She is not adorable. She is smug and ungracious and self-congratulatory. She never looks like she’s having fun except when she’s making fun of other people. She reminds me of our president. Nothing does more to kill the funny than that.

Tina Fey is a “mean girl” masquerading as a “nice girl”. The “nice girl” mask dropped when she displayed her dismissive and patronizing (matronizing?) attitudes toward her fellow comediennes and female comedic pioneers. Certain fellow comediennes have caught on and are administering their equivalent of a “beat-down” on someone who regards herself as “all that and a bag of chips”.

Maybe not THAT funny, but she generates enough of a composite score to succeed.

She is good looking in real life (as many women are) but ALSO good looking on film. Many much more attractive women simply are not, for whatever subtle nuances of photogenics their are that render MOST of us less attractive on film.

She posessed a reasonable amount of “talent” to make the audition, and the social/business savy to navigate the casting couches and contracts to get to where she is. Not every “pretty girl” with a modicum of “talent” can achieve her stature on acting/comedy skills alone.

Of course, her Political Views are simply Boiler Plate Hollywood, a perverted “dont rock the boat” type of accepted solidarity with the Ordinary Leftists, in which savaging people like Mrs Palin and her supporters is as unremarkable to THEM, as saying “please” and “thank you” among our friends is to US.

Ms Fey is simply a slightly above average celebrity. Nothing fantastic about her, no major pull, draw, skill, or ability that sets her very much apart….

Aside from her amusing likeness to a much more intellegent, capable, proven, sucessful and MEANINGFUL woman.

Kathy is right about Andrea Martin and Catherine O’Hara. Nobody touches them.

Actually, Kathy herself can play with the best of them when it comes to crafting a good line.
I’ve ruined many a keyboard with spit takes while reading her blog over a morning coffee.
And her Ed Anger stuff was Hall of Fame material.

What the hell, Kathy, why aren’t you writing screenplays or something?

It has nothing to do with smoking pot, so the people who say that might be talking about acid. Maybe SNL is funny on LSD.

I’ve never liked SNL. Even when it had a better cast (Eddie, Steve, Martin) it wasn’t funny. It’s always been a leftist political outlet. That ideology pervades the “comedy”, and has, since its inception.

When I see women hating on her, I feel a little sorry for them that they cannot appreciate the talents and successes of this strong, smart woman, and cannot help but think that they are taking themselves a little too seriously (which is one thing that makes Tina so refreshing).

if you’re off curing cancer, then you are making six figures a year. Your decorative man that you walk all over in Earth Shoes has enough play money to go to a nice strip bar. The girl he falls for will be the same age as you, when ya’ll met- that would be 19- 21, and she won’t be a complete psycho female- empowerment, men as doormat, bitch. It’ll be trading up for him, not down.

and strippers cannot take men off the shelf that aren’t already half-fallen. Mr Bullock has sleazy tastes. It was just a matter of time. I’m sorry Sandra Bullock had more hope than sense. I really do hope she marries a nice man who is worthy of her devotion.

For that matter, strippers work the room, same as a comedian, except half- dressed, possibly half- tanked, and no microphone to hide behind. Diablo Cody is funny and real, which is more than I can say about Tina Fey.

I loved your first paragraph – mint. I disagree about Bullock being such a lady and Jesse such a heal. He cheated, he wrote a book with his side and he suffered for his actions. Bullock’s warning to her movie son not to get a girl pregnant (football player whatever movie it was called) showed her lack of class beyond measure. Actors and actresses who won’t reveal themselves without clothes will still reveal themselves by not refusing to do sexually demeaning actions (to men of course), and whipped men or fakers (Tim McGraw) chuckle along with it. If I were the “son,” despite her previous help, it’d be, “Don’t visit me and don’t call me son.”

I actually like Tina Fey (or at least used to), but I don’t think she’s anywhere near as talented as she or her fans think she is. I only got through a few chapters of her book, Bossypants, because frankly, it wasn’t all that funny and it was very badly written. Plus, her background is really not all that interesting. Unlike David Sedaris (who IS a funny writer), she was unable to take the mundane details of her early life and turn them into anything amusing. I’ve noticed a lot of backlash against her started after the book came out – maybe because a lot of her peers, fans, and detractors read it as well and all came to the same conclusion: it’s crap.

Maybe part of Tina Fey’s appeal to certain people is that she’s been able to successfully bury the fact that she’s a nag underneath her faux-quirky, faux easy going persona. She’s able to be a bitchy scold and get away with it because she makes it sound cutesy and ironic (e.g. the title of her book: “Bossypants”). I prefer aggression to be less passive.

I don’t think the problem with Tina Fey is limited to gender, although my view may be due to personal tastes in comedy and getting older. It seems to me that popularly packaged comedy from the 1990′s onward has been less about telling a joke and more about being a joke. The latter relies upon character eccentricites in lieu of telling a story with a climaxes/punchlines, and the natural mechanics means laughing AT the character rather than WITH the performer. If a perfomer who has been making a career at being laughed AT decides he wants people to laugh WITH him, and if there’s not enough talent for WITH, the performer tends to fade and sometimes the word “overrated” gets tossed around. If the performer was particulary mean spirited, his flameout can be even faster, for schadenfreude is a harsh mistress. When it happens to a woman, feminist intellectualizing is optional.

Article was poorly written and hard to read, as was the first quotation in it — can’t any of these funny people write with a noun, a verb, and a subject in a clear and concise fashion?

Agree that Fey has done Palin so many times that progressives now can’t tell the difference and are mis-attributing their Palin-hatred to Fey because she *looks* like Palin.

Also wonder if there’s been a social dog whistle with Alec Baldwin and network suits’ multiple attributions of the success of “30 Rock” to Baldwin only, with teensy or no mention of Fey’s contribution. I’ve read a couple of headlines to the effect that “30 Rock” is Baldwin’s show and when he decides to leave it, it won’t be allowed to live on.

Really? M*A*S*H managed to make multiple cast changes before it headed for its final demilitarized zone, although I do think that Sheen’s departure from 2 1/2 Men will be its death knell. But surely if Fey is the writer AND creator AND star of a popular show, the departure of the male lead should not be a death blow, unless there’s an unspoken agreement that a female-led comedy can’t possibly succeed (hello, Lucy). I’d love to see it go on with, for example, Murphy Brown as the new Jack Donaghey. Or even better, Mary Matalin.

M*A*S*H was somewhat different than 30 Rock, though. It started as an ensemble cast. Some of the cast changes plugged holes in the give and take between characters.

I didn’t think it suffered from any changes in the cast, it suffered from Alan Alda taking over the writing nd direction of the show. By the time he finished recreating the show in his own image and used it as his personal soapbox, the show became unrecognizable.

Fey is vindictive and childish. Anyone who could get upset about what some anonymous commenter/s write about her physical attributes or UN-funniness in a gossip blog where everyone is ripped on (not just precious her) and then go on to mention those person’s monikers to berate in her books is full-on petty and narcissistic.

Kathy Griffin is funny because her jokes are spot-on about the celebrities she snarks on.

Meh, I don’t mind that she singles out fellow women of low moral character. I think Larry Flynt is a scumbag and will rant on him all day. The problem with Tina is that she isn’t funny. I thought she ruined Weekend Update.

Why are female comics(and black and latino comics)always told they “owe” their success to the comics who “paved the way” before them?
Are they supposed to grab the mike at the start of their set and say “this performance wouldn’t be possible without (insert name of dead female comic here)who I owe everything to.”
Tina Fey was the first female head writer for SNL, which has always been a notorious boys club.
That’s pretty impressive. But apparently that’s not good enough for Miss Crosbie.

Fey is a failure who relies on the charity of the entertainment bosses who agree with her politics. 30 Rock has had dismal ratings from the start and her movie success is scant. She is another overpraised, unfunny SNL alum laboring under the delusion people like her. Her Palin schtick was mean spirited and not the least bit entertaining, I was embarrassed FOR her.

What’s the point of saying that something or someone that someone else finds, interesting, funny or entertaining is, in fact, neither interesting, funny or entertaining? Besides, it’s Bob Dylan’s birthday. If you don’t like his singing, don’t listen to him.

I am not really into Tina Fey and I don’t really care about her status amongst women comics and all that. She probably is overexposed and a backlash seems to be just a matter of time these days in entertainment.

But the poor quality of this article needs to be noted. I would like to blame it on the website format as the PJMedia website is sub-optimal, to put it in polite terms, but the truth is that this article would look even worse if it was simply on a sheet of paper in black and white. It appears to be just bad writing hoping to hide the lack of effort put into it behind video links and page breaks.

Nothing against Ms Fey but alone side Lucille Ball, Rosalyn Russell, Myrna Loy, Jeannie Craine, Doris Day, Carol Burnett and hundreds of others, while she may be in good company she still has much to learn.

The Democratic presidents don’t get much ridicule. Bill Clinton had sex with prostitutes. He fathered a child with a black prostitute. How many know this? He used drugs and had affairs with 2 and 3 women at a time. He had nine personal bodyguards who were all shot. He could have given someone so much material. Now even though his crimes and descency should have kept him out of the White House. Now he can give speeches at $250,000 a pop. He approached Juanita Broadderick and said he was sorry for raping her and that he has changed and probably wondered why the women didn’t ask him to have sex with her. I hope Juanita Broadderick would approach him and record him admitting he had raped her. Know he’s got these foundations and a library. I would say the only thing he read was hustle magazine.

Not many females are funny. The biggest ones are the most arrogant. I like Lucille Ball. The females today are just plain nasty and crude. I don’t think Kath Grifith is so funny. A funny person is someone who can do five minutes on snack food or people’s character or the pizza delivery guy or something without just using other people and degrade them that is too easy. WOuld Lucille Ball be as funny on a stage degrading people?

I would like to see a comedian dog someone like George Bush and his 9/11 lies. Some of these comedians just dog someone like Sarah Palin. I mean Bill Clinton used drugs, screwed prostitutes, raped women and was a degenerate. George Bush was a drunk and a liar about WMD. I don’t know why Palin gives them so uch ammunitiion. I mean Hillary Clinton was married to Bill Clinton. Why didn’t any of them attack her for not divorcing Bill after he raped Juanita Broadderick. Hillary saw JUanita and walked up to her and warned her to keep her mouth shut. Hillary’s child is supposed to be Webster Hubble’s child. But you notice none of them says anything about Hillary. Could you imagine if Sarah was married to Bill Clinton? Sarah Palin is a country girl. She hunts and fish and city slicker comedian women don’t know what that is.

Dana Carvey is funny and there are many funny males. Females aren’t like the males. Many males are funny and many of them are fat or ugly. A nice looking female has to really have a good act. Kath Griffith talks too much. Sara SLiverman is just crude. Tina Fey should have done a number on other people. Sarah Palin I just don’t see all the material. Hillary Clinton being married to Bill should have been a target of so many comedian, but I don’t know if any of them every did her. These Hollywerid people only go after Republicans. Obama should give them material since he’s an illegal president.